Ab Origine
by Oldwickedsongs
Summary: [Ultraviolet] Sequel to Lite Pendente. How has [God] revealed Himself then? Is it still just us? Pearse Harman continues to find balance somewhere between death and life: both his own, and those that brought him here.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** "If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended,

That you did but slumber'd here while these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme is no more yielding then a dream."

Midsummer's Night Dream

**Ab Origine**

**By: Lady Erised**

**Prologue: Home**

There is a town in New South Wales that looks like someone took it out of a postcard and fleshed it out with feel-good movies of bygone years. In America, they talk of Anytown, USA and if such a thing had been created for this continent it would have been this place. The families that inhabit here have done so for years, have grown up and grown together until they share smiles, eyes and last names. They were older, and comfortable and white. They were decent folks overall too, lest any think otherwise. Predominately Catholic, the town valued family and tradition over other growth and wealth. When Samantha Chambers lost her husband in that accident, the whole community came together to help her out. They were family like that.

Sure, the town was growing and it was painful but the whole country- if not the whole world was growing and since when was growth easy? The little haven was becoming all sorts of colors like Lebanese brown and China yellow and the town's cynicism peered through in a growing police force (though they still had to use their own trucks) and the lumber stores were giving way to Internet cafes. But it was still home.

The town was farmers and commuters. The schools play soccer against one another. The Church holds open dinners and dancers and, regardless of race and religion, you'll get your first kiss in the old Cathedral's Gym if you're really a townsman. Sydney and its crime are as strange and distant as London or New York. Hell, in this place Tamworth is considered showy.

It's a small town. Small towns the world over are all the same; they grow up, grow old and dark. Secrets grow down in small towns, entrench themselves within the folklore and customs and become legend. Rumors stir up the dirt and become truth. Habits become sins that become crime. Crimes become gospel.

This town hides a legend just behind its gates: behind the smiles, eyes and last names, behind the prayers to Saint Peter, and church dances. It became famous for a time because of the legend and the crime that birthed it, because of the story: because of her.

Tamara Duncan. Angel Blue.

It's still mentioned from time to time, by tourist or Goth kid as they pass through the town. The old folks shake their head shamefully and change the subject. The young ones shrug it off as just mythos, another layer in a town so overbearing they can't way to escape. The brave point to the cemetery, and the braver journey there to find the story: to find her. But when she is thought of, like all good ghost stories, Angel Blue is invoked then forgotten. She is tucked away into the corners of the town; visible only to those who know where to look.

The house it started at is still standing for instance. It's an old two-story farmhouse about forty-five minutes from city hall; far enough out to be left alone but still situated near enough to be part of the school bus route when Tamara and the other kids lived there. It's painted pale blue with bright yellow trim. There's an old truck rotting in what use to be garage, and the old wooden fence long since broken down. Windows are cracked from the Goth kids who sneak in there at night on Halloween.

Alethea Harman had bought the house from Tucker Charles in the thirties when he moved to Adelaide. She lived there alone for years and then with her son, then the daughter and the next son. No one really remembered when she started raising the kids, or ever really recalled when they disappeared from her home. The children would just come and go, sometimes they would stay for a month or so, others aged and grew in the town, while some seemed to appear and disappear like water. Alethea just seemed to move on, and cope. The townfolk said it was because she was lonely, those who were kind said she was trying to build the family she never had, those who were not so kind frowned at such a perverse interpretation of family.

They were the same ones who knew that Alethea's son had something to do with Angel Blue. Why else would he have left in such a hurry as he did? Why else did he act so queer when the inspectors came to find him? Why else did he not come home, even when Alethea died and left him the house? No innocent boy would have acted so.

No, after Tamara died, the boy turned quiet and strange. Dark. No one was really surprised when he snuck out that one night, and no one had missed him since. But what they did notice, in that roundabout way all old small towns are aware, was the night the lights at Alethea's house turned on one night and the quiet, silent man who was suddenly living there.

It's a small town and small towns the world over are all the same; they talk. Secrets grow down and bitter in small towns, and rumors and whispers become truth and gospel.

And suddenly Tamara was alive again because Pearse Harman had come home.


	2. Home

**Chapter One: Home**

Pearse J Harman woke up because the sunlight was burning through his eyelids. His driver was a Lebanese who didn't know the story of the old Harman house. Pearse got that from three minutes of talking to the guy. He was nice of course and talked about the city in loving tones and Pearse made a point to resist grunting at him if no other reason then it wouldn't have been polite.

Living in London for as long as he had, Pearse was accustomed to the idea of multiculturalism but was still surprised enough when faced it point blank. He took a little cankerous pride in the fact he frowned inwardly when he saw same sex couples or minority children raised by Anglo families. It wasn't that he was against the ideas in and of themselves; he cherished unions and family as only one who spent his life devoid of them could, he was just unfamiliar and uncomfortable with those executions of those ideals.

Vaughn and Angie had chalked it up to him being Australian. Most Londoners did. In England being an Aussie was not so much an ethnicity as it was an excuse. It had branded him a foreigner and forever primitive. At best he became a cowboy and at worst, a noble savage. It put something feral behind his eyes that he never knew he possessed until Angie and Vaughn had pointed it out. Back in the day, simple asides and differences that may have normally been dismissed as personality defects and shortcomings suddenly became icons of his homeland. Rebellion, backwater behavior and stubbornness became cultural identity. He took their jibes the same way he took Michael's hatred for his vocation; as a necessary means to expel workplace angst and disgust and ignored them. It was part of his mythos as the Leader.

He had been called everything he used to describe his birthplace: mythic, rebellious, feral, unwelcoming and if that had for a moment made him feel anymore comfortable now that he returned to this God-forsaken nation; he would have been more then content.

But instead it cemented the concept that he was a stranger in a strange land. No, correction he thought not entirely without bitterness; he was a dying stranger looking for solace in a place that had long since ceased to be home. And why had he returned?

Simple.

He had nowhere else to go.

The car stopped in front of the old ranch, and the driver got out to help him because Pearse walked with a cane now. It was not permanent, thank God, but it was inconvenient. Rose liked it although she stole it from him and made him lean on her shoulder when he walked out of the hospital.

Vaughn and Michael had carried out his bags, Angie signed his paperwork; and the nurses laughed. Pearse half drugged on pain medication for his injury and half groggy from his cancer treatment only remembered bits and pieces of that day two weeks ago. Everything was felt harder to recall now, everything seemed harder, from walking to thinking one moment through to the next. But that day- that day everything had been just. Right.

Things were normal again.

Forget for a moment he was there because Vaughn shot him.

Forget for a moment why Vaughn shot him…

"_Then what would you have me do?"_

"_Come with me."_

_Pearse looked up, seeing but unseeing. He was suddenly so tired. So…weak, with bits of him falling away in the darkness. Why had left…why had God…Eli Eli…_

_How precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one his saints… _

_Where was He, Pearse wondered, where was God now…when he had always thought He would be there. God seemed absent again…_

_Just as He had that moment when Paul Hoyle had first offered Pearse this. Then he had been stronger…had been complete. God had seemed removed then but not gone. Now, Pearse just felt…_

"_You don't have to be afraid," He heard Olivia whisper as he became aware of her arms cradling him. "You don't even have to be concerned…you only have to be weak for a while…just one moment."_

_And Pearse closed his eyes, believing her._

_He felt like he was drifting in the darkness and then he felt nothing at all._

"Hey mister, you all right?" He heard the cabbie say from behind him. Pearse leaned heavily on his cane and inhaled.

"Fine." He lied, forcing his attention upward, to the house. "Just fine."

"Sure?"

Pearse nodded and continued his trek to the house's front door. Fishing through his pocket, Pearse found the key, pushed open the door and was surprised by what he saw as he stepped into the old ranch.

Stillness. Not even a breeze came through the living room to ruffle the white sheets thrown over the furniture to protect from dust. The house smelled of cedar, tansy and dried rosemary. A layer of dust grayed the hardwood floors, and blacked the mirrors of the mantelpiece out. From his place at the threshold he could see straight into the dining room, to and make out the big twelve-piece dinner table they had, with the China cabinet Alethea bought from Germany standing just out of sight. Right next to the door that led to the room Alethea used as a pantry was an embroidered picture of a bible verse: Train up a child the way they should go, and when he's old, he will not depart from it.

Everything was like he left it. He was half believing that any moment, Alethea would come out of the backroom: hands being wiped clean on her skirt and shouting at the kids to come down for dinner. One by one the phantom children would line up behind the chairs, hands folded behind their back and heads bowed. They recited the before-meal prayer, and sat down to eat.

He could almost see them, acting out memories forty years old.

"Mister?"

Pearse blinked again and looked behind him. The Cabbie was sitting on his bags giving him an exasperated look, somewhere between crossed and concerned. Pearse would have favored him with a crucifying stare but he was tired from the plane ride. Instead, he reached into his pocket, paid the man and tipped before walking deeper into the house. He heard the man shut the door behind.

Upstairs were five bedrooms. The first one, nearest to the stairs was Alethea's. Pearse left it untouched. The two bedrooms used for the kids: inside each were two sets of bunk beds. The boys' room was decorated with knights and dragons, hand-painted by Alethea. Galahad, Lancelot, Gawain, they were all here keeping watch over the boys. Written at the top of the room over and over again were the pieces of the Armor of God. Pearse laughed, God was never out of sight in this house. The girls' room was pink and polished, like a beauty salon. This room had the virtues of a beautiful woman to keep the ladies comfortable.

Across the hall was his bedroom. A cramped thing.

And right next to this was the sick room, a room of pale blues and purples, homemade quilts and old wicker furniture. It's where Alethea brought the kids first, to detox or to recoup from normal childhood illnesses.

Where he first met Tamara.

_Pearse Joseph Harman was smoldering in that way teenagers do. His back was pressed against the wall with his head bumping the bottom of a photograph that had Alethea holding a screaming very pissed off looking baby that she loved to point at as his baptism. It was the only baby picture in the entire house and was hidden away in his room along with the only "real" child. At least, Pearse was half-certain Alethea was his birth mother. _

_He had never called her mother, and wasn't aware of a time when it had been just them or of a father. Unlike most of the children he carried no memories of before Alethea, and he had her last name. Still outside of that photo, there were no other baby pictures and the child in that photo was already a toddler. Who knew?_

_He had long since found it amusing that at any given point in their lifetime, children wish they were adopted: he would have been far more to contented to know he wasn't. _

_This questionable paternity had been only one of numerous injuries to her persons that Pearse had adopted as a source of his teenage angst, and when mixed with the general lack of privacy, distant if cookie-cutter mother, normal inward and outward alienation and of course- as with any small town kid-the dreadful promise that this place would be the only place Pearse would ever live. _

_Not that he hated it here. He just had never been anywhere else before. His whole world had consisted of the farm, the kids, school and Church. He made good grades in school, played football till he broke his knee twice in one season, bathed the children and read to them, cooked sometimes, and he was respectful if not devout (and his Priest had a showcase displaying exact replicas of WW2 fighter planes that made him green with envy.) Still, there had to more to the world then this…_

_There were cities across the world from Vietnam, to Ireland, to Argentina that waged wars in Technicolor; there was talk of colonization of the moon, the ocean, the Middle East. The British were producing medicines to make people live longer and American bands and clubs were producing music and parties that made it worth living. As least that what the magazines said. _

_An entire world was passing while Pearse sat in his room listening to No Woman, No Cry trying to be profound. _

_He wasn't unhappy. He just wished the world happened a little to him. _

_There was a pounding the wall that jarred him from his restlessness but did nothing to improve his mood. He had ignored it for several minutes but the force of the pounding had warned him to continue in such a manner would be hazardous to his health. Alethea was in the sick room with a new kid, and she was not pleased. _

_Pearse grunted as he stepped into the room. _

_The first thing he became aware of the smell, stale sweat mixed with alcohol and something sour. There was a small rotating fan that hummed noisily in the corner, circulating the smell. On the bed there was a bundle of blankets twisted as obscene angles. The bundle was shivering. Clothing was spread around the bed, a pair of underwear still stuck to dingy blue jeans all graffiti with markers, a button up that looked like it belonged to some mechanic, a black twill coat several sizes too big for Pearse yet alone a girl and shoes with holes in the toes. _

_Underneath the mass of blankets Pearse saw bright blue and streaks of green-blue sprayed out across the pillow like a halo. He blinked and stared at it for a moment. _

_Alethea was up and drying her hands by the time he entered. Her blouse was speckled by something foul-smelling and dried bits of blood. Her hair had fallen loose from her bun, and her face was flushed. "Pearse…sit with her while I run down and get tea for her."_

"_But I got homework…" He jerked his head towards her, not wanting to be alone in the room with a sick child._

"_It can wait." His mother shot back in dark tones she rarely used in the house and never with him. It was the tone of voice that usually meant food and other liberties would be endangered by his further rebellion. "Just watch her while I run down, make sure…"_

"_Make sure what?"_

"_She's breathing." Alethea snapped as she swooped out of the room. _

_Pearse growled and looked back to the bed._

_A face had appeared from beneath the blankets and was staring at him. She was deathly pale, skin kissed with bits of green and yellow with purpled lips and beads of sweating pooling around her blue crown. She was naked under the blanket she made sure he saw that. _

_Pearse looked away to the door, and heard her laugh; thin and raspy like a rattle."How will you die?" She choked out._

"_Wha?"_

"_How will you die?"_

"_Never thought about it."_

"_That's stupid. It's the only way to live."_

"_That a fact?" Pearse drawled sitting down on the bed. The bundle laughed again but scooted over. He inhaled, ignoring her face and stared a corner of the wall. The bed was soaked, and this close he could feel the girl tremble._

_The bundle looked up, "You're cute." She mumbled. Pearse turned away from the wall, watching her. The bundle shrugged and turned over in bed, pressing her back to his arm. "Too bad you're fat…"_

Pearse woke up in the wicker chair sometime near one A.M to his cell phone buzzing angrily in his pocket. He pulled it out and silenced the alarm, chuckling a little. Time for his medication. He had never been so aware of time till he was dying; he wondered if that was some sick Doctor trick and if it was, why on earth would it be important. He crossed the little room to the bath it shared with his old bedroom and sat down on the toilet to take his pills.

He had had to skip it on the plane because of difficulties with the time changes and so forth so his stomach told him on no uncertain terms what it thought of said medication. He laughed a little again between the dry heaves and choked out tears. If he was smart, he would have cooked something.

Tomorrow he'd have to go into town and pick up foodstuff and set up appointments with the pharmacy. He'd pull the linens out from the attic, wash them all, hang the to dry and go about making house for himself and the ghosts. He wondered idly if he'd meet anyone from those days…

He could deal with those questions tomorrow. Tonight, he slide out of his coat, and draped it over his body as he laid on the bare bed. The mattress creaked under weight after so long before settling. The old house watched him nervously. He paid no mind to either.  
Pearse Harman had come home.


End file.
